Reading Football Club has certainly come a long way in a relatively short space of time. When I joined in 1995 we were struggling towards the bottom of the old Division One and playing in front of average crowds of around 8,000 at Elm Park.

Since then we have experienced rapid growth in every aspect of the club, most fundamentally of course with the move to Madejski Stadium in 1998 but also including the fanbase, the training ground, the playing and coaching staff, the general stadium infrastructure and the behind the scenes staff.

So we have come a long way, but it's crucial that we keep on progressing and developing, and we believe that this club still has a great deal of potential for further growth that has not yet been fulfilled.

Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United are out on their own as the biggest clubs in the country. Behind them, clubs such as Newcastle, Everton and Tottenham enjoy a greater status than we can aspire to in the short or medium term. But beyond that, there is potential for us to become as big as anyone.

We can't just sit back and be satisfied with where we are now, and we believe that aiming to become a top ten club, both in terms of league position and stature, is a realistic target for Reading Football Club. Steve Coppell recently said that we are in the league's 'third tier' in terms of size and status. He is right, but our ambition is to break into the second tier.

A significant reason why we believe this is possible is our location - quite simply, we feel that we benefit from possibly the best location out of any professional club in the country. That is a bold claim, but examine the facts:

- We are close enough to London for convenience, but not so close that we are competing directly with the London clubs.

- We can call upon a huge catchment area, ranging from Reading itself to large nearby towns such as Newbury, Basingstoke, Wokingham, Bracknell, Maidenhead, Windsor and Slough. None of these towns possess a professional club.

- We are fortunate enough to be located in a very wealthy and economically thriving part of the country, where inhabitants have relatively large amounts of disposable income.

- Close to the M4, Heathrow Airport, the south coast and the M25, our site is extremely accessible.

This location, along with the potential development of Madejski Stadium into a 38,000 capacity venue, means that we are focussed on continuing our growth and taking the Club even further.

We've greatly increased our fanbase in the last few years, which has been a key factor in our growth, and we are grateful to our loyal supporters who allow us to fill the stadium on a regular basis. It is also a benefit that we have a very young fanbase in comparison with many clubs, and my message to those supporters is that we are ambitious to keep getting better and better.

Throughout my time at Reading we have always followed a strategy of planned investment, of building the club gradually 'brick by brick' over a long period of time. I can assure you that approach remains unaltered, and we are continuing to invest in our future.

Promotion into the Premier League has given us a huge increase in revenue, and a large proportion of that additional income has been invested straight back into the infrastructure of the club, with millions being spent on our training ground, the pitch and new office facilities at Madejski Stadium.

The biggest single investment, of course, will be the addition of 14,000 more seats to the stadium capacity over the next few years, and there is also a significant amount of money available for Steve Coppell to strengthen the squad in January.

So in summary, we are continuing to grow and develop. For years, our mission was to become a Premier League club. Now that objective has been achieved, we have set our sights on a new ambition - to become a top ten Premier League club.

Nigel Howe
Chief Executive